Truly it is the height of human achievement that such hypocrisy is to be tolerated. For the dishonor of placing a bounty upon our enemies, our enemies not only claim moral superiority, but place their own upon us and accuse us of madness for being the first to loose the arrow.
In the advent of the capture of a citizen of their accursed peoples, we shall see if they care so greatly to arrange for the payment of their ransom; wanton slaughter is pointless, when our mines so hunger for able bodies to extract their mineral wealth, and our fields thirst for the labor of peoples that have never earned their place in this world.
The descendants of the once great peoples of Hawklight can claim only a fascilime of the grandeur of their ancients, the days are gone of the brilliance of minds of Axex Hawklight, and of the boundless ambitions of mages which once claimed loyalty to the house like the ancient Magus Legion who once called the house their home.
It is the right of every citizen of the empire to pursue risk in the interests of advancing themselves in the world, and so the empire can find no fault in the ambitious fools that would attemp to take the life of such a great and powerful man as the empire, the state, the law, but this pursuance of risk does not mean protection in the event of the risk falling through. Anyone suspected of plotting against the life and liberty of the empire, the state, the law, shall have the greatest penalty capable of being inflicted by mortal men against them, as well as those that would collaberate with them to this end. The empire shall hear out all challenges that go through the proper channels to seek the end of an age, but this encouragement of deceit shames the name of a house that once could call itself great.